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A hint for overseas mail: write the name of the country in
LARGE LETTERS on the bottom line of the address, even if the
overseas postal service wants its postal code to be the last
thing in the address. Another thing to watch out for is
identical abbreviations: a friend of mine in Washington State
had an undeliverable letter she had sent to someone in Australia
bounce all over Western Australia for weeks, before someone
noticed the US stamp, because both Washington and Western
Australia are abbreviated WA, and she hadn't put USA on her
return address.
I once tested the zip-code-only approach in its extreme form:
when they first issued nine-digit zipcodes, I had a post office
box at a station that existed entirely to serve a college that
wouldn't deliver outside mail on campus, and there were fewer
than 10000 P.O. boxes there, so we each had a unique nine-digit
zipcode. I successfully mailed a letter to myself using only
my name and the zip code--no box number, city, or state--though
I should note that it was mailed within the same city it was
addressed to.
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr%acmcr -dot- uucp -at- murphy -dot- com
